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LESSONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

U.S. CONSUMERS DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT GENETICALLY ENGINEERED
FOODS. IN AN ATTEMPT TO EDUCATE SHOPPERS â€” AND PREVENT
PROTESTS LIKE THE ONES IN EUROPE AND JAPAN â€” THE WORLD'S
LEADING BIOTECH COMPANIES HAVE IMPORTED SOME MARKETING STRATEGIES
FROM ABROAD.

THE WORLD'S MAJOR AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE COMPANIES LAUNCHED AN
UNPRECEDENTED COOPERATIVE PR CAMPAIGN LAST YEAR TO WIN OVER
AMERICAN CONSUMERS.

You may not know it, but you've undoubtedly eaten some. In the
past five years, bioengineered food has become an inescapable
aspect of modern life. Approximately two-thirds of all processed
food now on U.S. supermarket shelves has ingredients that have been
genetically rearranged through biotechnology. This year, more than
two-thirds of the American soybean crop and about one-quarter of
the corn was grown from genetically altered seeds, according to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yet most Americans are unaware that
this latest agricultural revolution has officially begun. Just 20
percent of U.S. consumers realize that they have already eaten
genetically modified foods, according to a January 2001 survey by
the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Less than 15 percent
of us understand how common these foods are in the
supermarkets.

In fact, agricultural biotechnology began to register in the
American consciousness only last fall, when a type of biotech corn
not yet approved for human consumption accidentally wound up in
taco shells and other products. The mix-up made headlines, the food
companies launched recalls, and biotech industry executives began
to worry about consumer backlash. After all, a shoppers' revolt
overseas had virtually shut down the Japanese and European markets
for genetically modified foods. In response to protests, major
British supermarket chains now refuse to stock such products, and
the European Union requires labels on any food that includes even
small amounts of bioengineered produce. Now, the agricultural
biotech industry is rushing to halt this marketing meltdown before
it reaches the U.S., where consumers spend more than $400 billion a
year on groceries.

There are already signs that anti-biotech sentiment is spreading
to the U.S. Anticipating consumer concern, Frito-Lay has asked its
suppliers not to use genetically engineered corn and Gerber has
pledged to keep its baby food biotech-free. And as a pre-emptive
move, the world's major agricultural science companies launched an
unprecedented cooperative PR campaign last year. Their goal: To win
over the American consumer and prevent a repeat of the European
reaction, where protest against genetically modified food was swift
and powerful. (See timeline, page 52.) Public opinion across the
continent now ranges from skeptical to hostile: According to a
spring 2000 poll of 3,000 Europeans by marketing research firm
Ipsos-Reid, consumers worry that the crops will mutate
uncontrollably, make people sick or cause unforeseen environmental
disasters, like inadvertently breeding a new race of super
weeds.

Here in the U.S., consumers haven't made up their minds yet. In
the Pew study, which polled 1,001 adult Americans as part of a new
biotechnology education initiative, 65 percent of U.S. consumers
said they supported research into genetically modified foods. But
when asked whether they wanted these products on supermarket
shelves, more than half (58 percent) said no, and 54 percent
reported that they would not be likely to eat the foods. Other
surveys found similar patterns: According to the Ipsos-Reid poll,
which also surveyed 2,001 adult Americans and Canadians,
respondents hope this technology will produce healthier foods (18
percent), enable farmers to use fewer pesticides (15 percent) and
perhaps even help solve world hunger with more efficient crops (31
percent). But they also fear that these new foods may cause
allergies or make them sick (28 percent), or that the crops may
have unpredictable side effects (25 percent).

This absence of firm opinions is a crucial opportunity for the
biotech companies to win the hearts and minds of consumers. To that
end, the industry has taken a coordinated and proactive approach,
adopting some marketing lessons from its European experience. Among
the lessons:

CONSUMERS HAVE ONLY LIMITED CONFIDENCE IN SCIENCE.

Agricultural biotechnology was developed to accelerate the
process of improving crops and livestock through selective
breeding. Cotton, for example, was redesigned with a bacterial gene
that allows the plant to produce its own pesticide, reducing the
cost of spraying crops. Other plants have been modified to resist
common diseases or to tolerate weed-killing herbicide sprays.
Multinational titans like Novartis AG, Aventis S.A., Monsanto and
DuPont have spent hundreds of millions on this research in the past
two decades, mostly on modifying staples like soy, corn and cotton,
making them easier and cheaper to plant and grow.

But few shoppers cheer on the farmer in his fight against the
European corn borer. With no obvious consumer benefits, people are
more likely to be wary of this new technology, says William
Hallman, an associate professor at Rutgers University's Cook
College, who studies perceptions of risk. â€œThe products
released first were not poster children for biotechnology,â€?
he says. â€œThe benefits accrued first to the companies,
secondly to farmers and to consumers dead last â€” if at
all.â€?

In Europe, the biotech industry misunderstood the depth of the
public feeling about food and misjudged people's faith in science,
Hallman says. Companies shrugged off consumer fears about allergic
reactions or environmental catastrophes. Decades of research had
proved this technology safe, they reasoned, so why should shoppers
worry? What's more, the industry erred by trying to explain this
technology with a science-first approach. â€œScientists and
real people don't think the same way about issues,â€? he says.
Most people want to understand the human decisions behind the
science: Who has developed these products and why. If consumers
believe that biotech initiatives may solve serious environmental or
agricultural problems, says Hallman, then they are much more likely
to support it.

Even industry representatives admit that assuming that the
research spoke for itself was a big miscalculation. In a candid
speech last winter, Monsanto's new CEO, Hendrik Verfaillie,
acknowledged that his company â€œmissed the fact that this
technology raises major issues for people, issues of ethics, of
choice, of trust, even of democracy and globalization. â€¦ When
we tried to explain the benefits, the science and the safety, we
did not understand that our tone, our very approach, was seen as
arrogant.â€?

Hallman's focus group research shows that few people in this
country even remember their high school biology, and the public is
not really interested in learning how genetic engineering works.
Says Peter Cleary, spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of
America, a food industry trade group: â€œThe early phase of
biotechnology has been marked by a perhaps naÃ¯ve look at
consumer acceptance. The assumption was made that since the science
was so solid, consumers would automatically accept it.â€?

CONSUMERS SHOULD BE GIVEN INFORMATION â€” AND A
CHOICE.

In Europe, public support for genetically modified foods began
to collapse soon after the products were approved for import in
1996. At first, angry opponents grabbed headlines in France and
Ireland by torching experimental cropland and seizing imported
seeds. Within a few years, opposition had spread, according to the
1999 Eurobarometer survey organized by the European Commission's
public opinion analysis unit. This poll, which surveys 16,000
people every three years on a range of issues, found that the
percentage of Europeans who support pest-resistant crop research
slumped from 58 percent in 1996 to 42 percent in 1999. In 1996, 50
percent thought that using biotechnology in food was â€œmorally
acceptable.â€? By 1999, only 37 percent agreed.

In this country, however, the first time that many consumers
even realized that these products were on the market was during
last fall's taco shell recall. The recall started because food
processors worried that consumers might develop allergies to the
bioengineered corn, which had not been approved as human food but
mistakenly wound up in everything from polenta to tortilla chips.
Allergic reactions didn't become a widespread problem, but the
scare had one major casualty: the public trust. The Pew survey
found that by January, 57 percent of consumers said they'd heard
either â€œsomeâ€? or a â€œgreat dealâ€? about the
recall, and 73 percent said they were either â€œveryâ€? or
â€œsomewhatâ€? concerned about it.

The fact that many consumers first learned about this technology
as the result of a food scare was bad news for the industry, says
Hank Jenkins-Smith, a Texas A&M political scientist who has
just completed a major study of public opinion on genetically
modified food. People tend to become angry and suspicious if they
get the impression that companies are introducing controversial new
technologies on the sly. â€œThe biggest hurdle in the way of
support [for genetically modified foods] is the belief that this
has been foisted on an unsuspecting public,â€? Jenkins-Smith
says. â€œAmericans are more than willing to take risks â€”
we ski, we drive on crazy roads and shake our fists at one another.
But we believe that we make the choice. When the choice is taken
out of our hands â€¦ [it] creates the potential for outraged
reactions.â€?

It's the same challenge the chemical industry faced decades ago,
says Caron Chess, director of the Rutgers University Center for
Environmental Communication. A major corporation that profits from
a complicated technology that few average Americans understand must
be careful to avoid creating a public impression of secrecy.
â€œIndustries dealing with technologies perceived as risky have
to behave in ways more responsive to public opinion,â€? Chess
says. â€œOtherwise they'll get hammered.â€?

WHEN INTRODUCING A RADICALLY NEW TECHNOLOGY, COMPETITORS
MUST UNITE.

In an effort to outflank biotech critics and soothe consumer
fears before they take hold, the industry's major companies,
normally bitter rivals, launched a $50-million-a-year ad campaign
in 2000. This new Council for Biotechnology Information combines
print and TV ads with an online magazine and a student scholarship
to put forward a warmer, friendlier message â€” that biotech
creates safe, healthy products that are good for farmers and good
for the earth.

It won't be an easy sell. Focus group research (like Hallman's)
shows that consumers know little about modern agriculture and
aren't particularly interested in learning more. Furthermore, even
the most technologically astute Americans tend to get nervous when
science is brought to the dinner table, says Texas A&M's
Jenkins-Smith: â€œ[Food] is particularly rich ground for
bringing forth negative and positive images when something is
technically complicated, generates scientific uncertainty and
evokes an immediate sense of threat.â€?

His team's polling research, conducted in association with
researchers from the University of New Mexico, found four major
attitude clusters among U.S. consumers. The team, which used a
random telephone survey to dial 1,000 numbers, found that about 12
percent of Americans are committed opponents of bioengineered
foods. Another quarter of the population are techno-friendlies who
welcome agricultural biotech despite the risks. Most consumers
belong to one of two central clusters â€” a highly conflicted
group that recognizes both the potential risks and benefits, and an
indifferent group that hasn't given either side much thought.

The two groups have very different profiles. The conflicted
group has a higher proportion of women than the other three
segments, and a moderate percentage of people with college degrees
(36 percent). The undecided/indifferent group tends to be less
educated and is split more evenly between men and women.

The Council for Biotechnology Information hopes to reach this
confused majority through a multilevel public relations effort
aimed at emphasizing the benefits that biotech offers to
agriculture. Linda Thrane, the Council's executive director, says
that one flank of the strategy is to reach out to primary food
shoppers â€” most often women â€” with a positive message
intended to resonate with people who are more attuned to community
and family issues than to news. â€œTo get the consumer's
attention,â€? Thrane says, â€œyou have to present it more
in terms of what goes on your family's dinner plate. Is this safe?
What is the point of this to me and my life?â€?

Last year, the campaign's first efforts tied agricultural
science to the much more popular success of medical biotechnology.
Thirty-second network TV spots alternated images of healthy people
and farmers, as the voice-over explained: â€œDiscoveries in
biotechnology, from medicine to agriculture, are helping doctors
and farmers to treat our sick and protect our crops.â€?

This year, the campaign highlights one of the attributes of
genetically modified science that polls best in surveys: its
eco-friendly potential. Rather than dwell on the sober science,
these ads place a greater emphasis on the warm and fuzzy. In one
full-page print ad, a ruggedly handsome soybean farmer in a cap and
worn suede jacket explains that biotech crops can help preserve the
topsoil, and, by extension, his farm and family. Instead of talking
about the science, the print and television ads direct the curious
to call a toll-free number or visit the council's Web site (www.whybiotech.com) for facts about the
genetically modified crops. Says Thrane: â€œThe core of this
issue is to educate people about agriculture, and then to educate
them about biotechnology. We've got our work cut out for us.â€?
That's one of several marketing lessons the industry has adopted
from overseas. Call it just another expensive European import.

1996
Monsanto introduces herbicide-resistant soybeans, the first
bioengineered major crop to be approved for marketing. About 1
million acres are planted in the U.S. Cotton and corn are next.

November 1996
One of the first shipments of genetically engineered soybeans to
Europe is blockaded by Greenpeace in Hamburg; 100,000 Germans sign
petition to ban the seeds.

December 1996
After much controversy, the European Union votes to approve imports
of genetically modified crops.

Fall 1997
The Gaelic Liberation Front destroys Monsanto's first sugar beet
test plot in County Carlow, Ireland the day before harvest.

1997
The number of new genetically modified crops in field tests
worldwide tops 2,500.

1998
More than 100 angry French farmers destroy France's first biotech
corn crop.

1998
More than half of the global soybean crop and nearly a third of the
corn planted in 1998 is genetically modified, but 44 percent of
Americans say they are â€œnot awareâ€? of genetically
engineered foods.

June 1998
Monsanto launches a European public relations campaign. Britain's
Prince Charles lashes out at agricultural biotechnology.

April 1999
In response to consumer pressure, Britain's largest grocery chain
pledges to phase out biotech foods.

July 1999
Gerber stops using biotech ingredients in its baby foods, even
though then-parent company Novartis is a leader in genetic
engineering research.

2000s

April 2000
The top U.S. agricultural science companies, normally staunch
competitors, form the Council for Biotechnology Information to
launch a $50-million-a-year PR campaign.

September 2000
StarLink, a type of bioengineered corn not cleared for human
consumption, is found in U.S. taco shells and other corn foods,
prompting a major recall. Dozens of people report allergic
reactions, although Centers for Disease Control tests later find no
connection.

Spring 2001
After pulling back in 2000 in response to protests and consumer
fears, U.S. farmers return to biotech. This year, genetically
modified crops cover more than 82 million acres of U.S. farmland,
up 18 percent from 2000. The government estimates 68 percent of all
soybeans, 69 percent of cotton and 26 percent of corn in the U.S.
is grown from genetically modified seed.